Marie Schneegans got her introduction to the work world through an internship at financial giant UBS in Switzerland in 2012. Initially excited, she quickly found herself lost in its sea of workers.

“At lunch, I would always eat alone,” she says, recalling many sandwiches eaten at her desk. "I felt very unhappy and isolated in that work environment.”

Schneegans decided to shake things up. She began knocking on doors to find lunch companions and scheduled breakfast meetings with team members. The result? “People were surprised, but most of the time they said yes,” and Schneegans began feeling more engaged with her colleagues -- and with the work itself. She even found herself dining with the company’s CEO.

Realizing she had identified a real need in the modern workplace, Schneegans soon decided to bring her remedy to the corporate masses. In 2015, she launched Never Eat Alone, an app that helps employees at large companies connect with one another over a meal.

Today, her company -- which has 17 employees, and offices in Paris and New York City -- works with more than 70 firms with at least 500 employees each. It currently pulls in under $1M in revenue annually, and has raised about $1.5M in investment capital for expansion. Now, Schneegans plans to grow her venture internationally and promote community within companies everywhere she goes.

“I always wanted to make a big impact,” she says, even if she didn’t know how. “When I saw the problem, I wanted to create a solution.”

A Lonely Fish in a Giant Pond

Schneegans was born and raised in Switzerland, then educated in France at the Université Paris Dauphine. It was toward the end of her schooling that she took on the internship in UBS’s wealth management department.